Alternating Sexualities: Sociology and Queer Critiques in India

Abstract

Questions of alternation might be read as intrinsic to sociological approaches to sexual difference and diversity. By this we mean ways in which the sexual as social scientific subject/object has oft been conceived of against the background of fluctuating conceptual and contextual registers. Terms for the empirical description, recognition and analysis of sexual life-worlds have most often been contested and queried. This might be especially so with regard to ‘sexually dissident’ subjects - those for whom terms of depiction in research and polity might be especially vexed and complex because running counter to claims to ‘normative’ modes of representation. Such processes, in turn, might be seen to respond to the alternating experiential and political framings of contemporary and historical sexual life-worlds. This has been evident in India in recent times, for instance, as non-cis-gendered and non-heteronormative subjects have found themselves on the cusp of legislative and social changes.